The Electric Hare
1994, Super 8 film, 2minsA one minute version of the film is also available
Filmed at Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium in 1993. Filmed at race speed (over 60mph), the rabbit ‘lure’ was chased 13 times each race night by six racing greyhounds.
In Philip Warnell’s short piece in One Minute Volume 1, titled The Electric Hare, documenting the lure used in greyhound racing, we see weathered and expressive human hands attaching the object, which resembles a child’s cuddly toy, to the apparatus that will whirl it round the track at sixty miles an hour. A camera fixed to the trolley then shows us the lugubrious toy hare looking somehow increasingly vexed as the world falls rapidly away behind it. So much is given to us beyond bare content, arising simply out of the what and how of recording. One can imagine, how almost the same piece – more distant shots, a less battered and expressive hare, younger hands – could have resulted in a much paler work and a less affecting one.
